The present invention relates to the overhead conveyor for carrying a vehicle body, and preferably, relates to the overhead conveyor, which carries a vehicle body by supporting the front side bottom part and the rear side bottom part of the vehicle body with the front side hanger arm and rear side hanger arm, respectively.
Generally, in order to perform efficient assembly in the limited premise, three-dimension of an assembly line is propagated. Especially, in the vehicle assembly line in which various components of a vehicle are attached to the vehicle body from the lower direction of it, a conveyor line is installed in two steps of upper and lower sides. And in this vehicle assembly line, a vehicle body is temporarily taken up above the downward conveyor line (hereafter called as friction conveyor) by the upper conveyor line (hereafter called as overhead conveyor). And in this state, the components for the underbody of a vehicle are attached from the lower direction of it.
As one of this kind of conventional overhead conveyor, the conveyor in which a vehicle body is taken up on supporting the side-sill of the vehicle body is known. And as another kind of conventional overhead conveyor, the conveyor in which damage on the various components for attaching to the side-sill part of a vehicle body is prevented is known (disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent publication H2-117508). In the latter conveyor, the damage is prevented by supporting the vehicle body using the front hanger arm and the rear hanger arm, one of which is fixed to the hanger body and another of which is fixed to the hanger body movably.
Especially, with the latter overhead conveyor (disclosed in a Japanese Laid-Open Patent publication H2-117508), the holding member for front wheels is fixed to the front part of the conveyance equipment which moves along with the conveyance rail through a couple of perpendicular arms. And the holding member for the rear wheel is movably arranged on the sliding arm, which is built over the sliding arm fixed to a couple of perpendicular arms at the rear of the conveyance equipment. So, in the over head conveyor, the safe carriage of a vehicle may be attained by holding the front wheel and rear wheel, which were supported by a front holding member and a rear holding member, using a front part holding member and the rear holding member, respectively.
The components for the underbody of a vehicle will be attached from the lower direction of it, on restricting the movement of a vehicle body by holding it using the front holding member and the rear holding member. However, a relative location gap between the attaching components and the vehicle side occurs, depending on the buffer of suspension equipment, such as a tire and a shock absorber. So, the difficulty of the attaching operation will arise by this location gap.
Arranging the means for averting attaching operation difficulties, which is caused by these buffers on the equipment side such as a steering system and an engine and the like, is also assumed. However, since the construction of equipment is more complicated and production cost goes up, further arrangement of such means is difficult.
Thus, a problem of assembling the various components with no difficulty and without causing damage on the bottom part of the vehicle body on assembling, even when the vehicle on assembling may differ in it""s form, arises. This invention aims at solving this problem.
The present invention is proposed in order to attain the above-mentioned purpose, and it offers the overhead conveyor equipped with the following composition. That is, an overhead conveyor in which a pair of front hanger arms for loading the bottom part of front part of a vehicle body and a pair of rear hanger arms for loading the bottom part of rear part of a vehicle body are arranged at a hanger body which moves along with the rail provided in the ceiling side, is characterized in that one of the pair of front hanger arms and the pair of rear hanger arms are movably attached to the hanger body, the hanger body having an engaging part to control the movably attached pair of hanger arms with each engaging position of vehicle body through an engaging lever, and having an actuator for operating the engaging-and-disengaging movement of the engaging lever is offered.
Also, the engaging lever may be provided to the movably attached pair of hanger arms, and the actuator is set to move corresponding to the movement of the movably attached pair of hanger arms matched with a vehicle type.
With the above construction, various type of vehicle bodies are carried on stabilized and supported condition, without being affected by the buffer effect of the elasticity of a tire and a suspension equipment. Moreover, the difficulty of the assembling operation will be improved as compared to the assembling operation in the conventional overhead conveyor in which the vehicle body is supported by a roller.
An engaging lever is engaged with the engaging part by performing the following operations. First, the pair of hanger arms are moved, which can move corresponding to the support position of various vehicle bodies, and moves an actuator corresponding to the moved position of the pair of hanger arms, and then the engaging lever is engaged with the engaging part by operating the actuator to the engagement side. Then the pair of hanger arms, which are movably provided on the hanger body, may be engaged with the hanger body.